Ashlands Gaurantees I wont be buying from Iron Gate Studio again.

[Ulrich_the_Raucous.TTV]

Here's why:

I get that people like dying every three seconds in survival games, but I'm not one of them.

With the Ashlands spawn rate so incredibly high, unless you literally turn the enemies OFF all you do is combat combat combat. Even to the point where Ashlands enemies are spawning in the PLAINS biome, miles away from the Ashlands, in a place that should be relatively 'safe'.

I worked hard to get all my gear as far as it could go before the update and I am not surprised to find it mostly ineffective making it that the effort I put in proved fruitless. This has been the case for pretty much every biome I've moved through to date. So punishing players for doing their best is certainly in the ethos of Iron Gate.

Then we get to farming the Flametal. Assuming you can actually get out to one of the farm points, (The closest which I have found so far is 5 basalt bombs into the lava) as soon as you get there you are swamped by enemies and have little to no warning that it's sinking and ...... Death ..... Again, with minimal chance of being able to bomb / fight your way back to your gear.

So yeah, you can talk about getting on hills to fight, building crafting benches every 20m, deploying shields or any other strat. I've already tried. That doesn't change the fact that Ashlands has sucked what fun was left out of Valheim.

Some possible fixes:
A set of armour or perhaps a potion that makes you IMMUNE to fire / lava for an extended period. (This might be 3-5 minutes with a 10 min cool down. This could also be ignored by those wanting to play 'hardcore' or could potentially only be available on certain difficulty settings.)
A slider bar for 'Spawn Rate' (The middle of the bar could be current rate. It can lower to .25 or raise to X3 depending what type of experience the player wants.)

Finally, Having to turn multiple settings down to basically zero just to have a chance to survive unending combat is, frankly, boring and removes any semblance of replay ability for a gamer like myself.

P.S. The spawn rates I speak of are DAY. (Not that you can tell the difference between day and night with time to get home in half the biomes.)

[Gunnar Hurtya]

So have you trained Asksvin and have a saddle so you can safely explore?

[Gunnar Hurtya]

Originally posted by Gunnar Hurtya:

So have you trained Asksvin and have a saddle so you can safely explore?

I mine the spires, then jump on an asksvin to pick it up, seems quite easy to me. Put down torches to stop mobs spawning, I really don't see why you're having trouble, use the dead raiser and bubble if it's that hard for you, sheesh.

[Nerevar]

most of this is hyperbole. probaly due to beeing angry while posting it.

someone who calls himself a "gamer" WHILE pretending that you need to lower all settings to nearly zero to stand a chance makes you wonder if this isnt a simple case of overconfidence on the users end.

it seems there is also a lack of "out of the box" thinking for solutions.

then there is the fact that the flametal pillars arent even required to be dealt with.
nor are basalt bombs needed to reach the pillars with some exceptions. but there is always some that are close to shore. tc clearly didnt even try on this front despite his claims.
pillars give little warning before sinking? are we playing the same game on this game? like.

this cannot be a serious claim by the tc. that beeing said the pillar sinking will be disabled with an update next month for the time beeing until the devs can fix the perma float bug with the surface of the leviathians. not that you need all the metal per pillar either way its just a bonus.

constant combat is a claim that only people make who think they must fight everything that comes thier way head on. i wonder what makes players think that is a good approach to any group of enemies. i would never fight a group of seekers or fulings or draugr or wolves head on while i am still progressing the biome they appear first in.

ashlands enemies also do not spawn in the plains aside from raids events. which is pretty normal and was the same for all other biomes before aswell. and its not even anything scary that spawns. only twitchers archers and some warriors. none of that is a problem for a well defended base in a plains. like seekers where way harder to keep out than these things compared. so that complain makes no sense at all.

i could see them buffing the flametal set to provide more heat resistence to prolong the seconds before lava dmg kicks in by a fair tough. thats not a bad idea overall. but not minute long immunity. thats silly. may aswell remove lava dmg then as that makes it so trivial it serves no purpose anymore.

[lumina]

Seems a little dramatic... You are playing an early access game. This isn't how the final version is going to be. Why not at least wait for the full release before stating that they this one games early design choices mean you'd never guy another game from them lol... What the?

And why would they listen to anything you say after that start to a post? You are no longer a customer of theirs. No need to even bother with your suggestions as they should keep making the game for their customers.

[Cattastrafy]

I think all of your problems will be solved in the next patch. Some of your post makes it sound like you need to get gud too.

[A]

because player retention is a thing, and you don't typically want to drive off people who otherwise enjoy your games i imagine if someones spent that much time playing and getting to ashlands only to decide they just cant do it anymore seems like valuable info and its good its vocalized and not just kept to themselves and they never log on again which im sure many do

Originally posted by lumina:

Seems a little dramatic... You are playing an early access game. This isn't how the final version is going to be. Why not at least wait for the full release before stating that they this one games early design choices mean you'd never guy another game from them lol... What the?

And why would they listen to anything you say after that start to a post? You are no longer a customer of theirs. No need to even bother with your suggestions as they should keep making the game for their customers.

[nixlan]

I dare the Devs to make a legitimate poll which asks if players enjoy Ashlands on the normal setting,.

Imagine making an award winning game, and then intentionally making it unplayable by 80% or more of your paying customers who don't wish to endlessly fight trash every 10 feet in game.

[Draconis]

Well....

How I see it:

Since the release of Ashlands the Valheim's review score went down. It's overall 94% positive with 84% recently positive right now.
So yes, even those of us who really enjoy Ashlands will have to admit there does something go wrong with the new biome.

Also, posts like this are being made on quite a regular basis and it's actually the same few persons who come do defend it.
We'll all have to damit that this is a clear indicator that things must change.

I for myself am a bit ambivalent towards ashlands. I totally like the idea of having a warzone-style biome, but the way it is done is not my cup of tea.
It begins with reaching Ashlands at all. If you don't spoil yourself you can have a really hard time. Especially if terrain generation rng is not in your favor...
It goes on with the masses of foes and what we can do about it. The latter being the real problem, because even if we know all the ways to avoid foes and get rid of them (some by jumping up rocks, some by perfecting combat, others by quickly building and terraforming to get an advantage).... well, we actually don't do anything new, do we? Except for the shield generator, but to be honest - that's almost like you place wisp torches in Mistlands to keep your base clear from fog. Just now we set up the generator to clear the base from cinder rain.
We have new spikes for defence. Well, we got something similar with black forest already. That's not actually new.

So this leads to two different thoughts... the first is: "Wow, this is way too difficult with all those armies pressing", the second one is "Oh, it works this way again...."
I went through both phases. But I know myself for having similar problems as long as I play Valheim. Whenever I reach a biome that I don't know yet I die a lot and after a while I learn to handle it... and it's better on the next playthrough.

TL;DR - I thin Iron Gate should really collect specific suggestions to impore ashlands and decide what they want to do there.

The spawn rate lowered on public test seems to be the easiest way to meet current criticism, but I don't feel like this solves the actual problem. And the real problem is that once the combat becomes less of a problem (because you gear up, lern the enemies, learn to recognize environmental dangers and so on) there is not much to do but... well, fighting. Maybe taming Asksvin.

What I miss most are three simple things:
- a more fleshed out siege system for fortresses (at least more than "Break or climb the wall and kill everything")
- more defensive buildings for bases and some way to quickly build defences while out in the field.
- real dungeons

If we had these three, Ashlands would be perfect. Even with the not-nerfed spawn rate.

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by Draconis:

Well....

How I see it:

Since the release of Ashlands the Valheim's review score went down. It's overall 94% positive with 84% recently positive right now.
So yes, even those of us who really enjoy Ashlands will have to admit there does something go wrong with the new biome.

Also, posts like this are being made on quite a regular basis and it's actually the same few persons who come do defend it.
We'll all have to damit that this is a clear indicator that things must change.

I for myself am a bit ambivalent towards ashlands. I totally like the idea of having a warzone-style biome, but the way it is done is not my cup of tea.
It begins with reaching Ashlands at all. If you don't spoil yourself you can have a really hard time. Especially if terrain generation rng is not in your favor...
It goes on with the masses of foes and what we can do about it. The latter being the real problem, because even if we know all the ways to avoid foes and get rid of them (some by jumping up rocks, some by perfecting combat, others by quickly building and terraforming to get an advantage).... well, we actually don't do anything new, do we? Except for the shield generator, but to be honest - that's almost like you place wisp torches in Mistlands to keep your base clear from fog. Just now we set up the generator to clear the base from cinder rain.
We have new spikes for defence. Well, we got something similar with black forest already. That's not actually new.

So this leads to two different thoughts... the first is: "Wow, this is way too difficult with all those armies pressing", the second one is "Oh, it works this way again...."
I went through both phases. But I know myself for having similar problems as long as I play Valheim. Whenever I reach a biome that I don't know yet I die a lot and after a while I learn to handle it... and it's better on the next playthrough.

TL;DR - I thin Iron Gate should really collect specific suggestions to impore ashlands and decide what they want to do there.

The spawn rate lowered on public test seems to be the easiest way to meet current criticism, but I don't feel like this solves the actual problem. And the real problem is that once the combat becomes less of a problem (because you gear up, lern the enemies, learn to recognize environmental dangers and so on) there is not much to do but... well, fighting. Maybe taming Asksvin.

What I miss most are three simple things:
- a more fleshed out siege system for fortresses (at least more than "Break or climb the wall and kill everything")
- more defensive buildings for bases and some way to quickly build defences while out in the field.
- real dungeons

If we had these three, Ashlands would be perfect. Even with the not-nerfed spawn rate.

things must change because of a minority?

the game had 10% negative reviews in generel before ashlands. steam has this cool little feature where you can actually see this day by day you know.

so overall the scores dropped by.... about 5-6%. thats definitly a minority if anything. that aint a reason for massive changes.

the major reason the game lost some score over the last year has very little to do with ashlands. its mostly due to the devs takeing forever to get 1 content update out which to be fair is absolutly justified to be called as they definitly are slow on that end.

regarding "you see posts here regularly" yeah. you also STILL see posts demanding mistlands changes and nerfs regularly. that aint a reason for changes. and neither is this. the steam forums are a tiny minority overall. that aint an indicator for anything.

thier discord is a much better place to judge things in this regard. or reddit even. both have way higher active post counts and users than this forum.

[Draconis]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

Originally posted by Draconis:

Well....

How I see it:

Since the release of Ashlands the Valheim's review score went down. It's overall 94% positive with 84% recently positive right now.
So yes, even those of us who really enjoy Ashlands will have to admit there does something go wrong with the new biome.

Also, posts like this are being made on quite a regular basis and it's actually the same few persons who come do defend it.
We'll all have to damit that this is a clear indicator that things must change.

I for myself am a bit ambivalent towards ashlands. I totally like the idea of having a warzone-style biome, but the way it is done is not my cup of tea.
It begins with reaching Ashlands at all. If you don't spoil yourself you can have a really hard time. Especially if terrain generation rng is not in your favor...
It goes on with the masses of foes and what we can do about it. The latter being the real problem, because even if we know all the ways to avoid foes and get rid of them (some by jumping up rocks, some by perfecting combat, others by quickly building and terraforming to get an advantage).... well, we actually don't do anything new, do we? Except for the shield generator, but to be honest - that's almost like you place wisp torches in Mistlands to keep your base clear from fog. Just now we set up the generator to clear the base from cinder rain.
We have new spikes for defence. Well, we got something similar with black forest already. That's not actually new.

So this leads to two different thoughts... the first is: "Wow, this is way too difficult with all those armies pressing", the second one is "Oh, it works this way again...."
I went through both phases. But I know myself for having similar problems as long as I play Valheim. Whenever I reach a biome that I don't know yet I die a lot and after a while I learn to handle it... and it's better on the next playthrough.

TL;DR - I thin Iron Gate should really collect specific suggestions to impore ashlands and decide what they want to do there.

The spawn rate lowered on public test seems to be the easiest way to meet current criticism, but I don't feel like this solves the actual problem. And the real problem is that once the combat becomes less of a problem (because you gear up, lern the enemies, learn to recognize environmental dangers and so on) there is not much to do but... well, fighting. Maybe taming Asksvin.

What I miss most are three simple things:
- a more fleshed out siege system for fortresses (at least more than "Break or climb the wall and kill everything")
- more defensive buildings for bases and some way to quickly build defences while out in the field.
- real dungeons

If we had these three, Ashlands would be perfect. Even with the not-nerfed spawn rate.

things must change because of a minority?

the game had 10% negative reviews in generel before ashlands. steam has this cool little feature where you can actually see this day by day you know.

so overall the scores dropped by.... about 5-6%. thats definitly a minority if anything. that aint a reason for massive changes.

the major reason the game lost some score over the last year has very little to do with ashlands. its mostly due to the devs takeing forever to get 1 content update out which to be fair is absolutly justified to be called as they definitly are slow on that end.

regarding "you see posts here regularly" yeah. you also STILL see posts demanding mistlands changes and nerfs regularly. that aint a reason for changes. and neither is this. the steam forums are a tiny minority overall. that aint an indicator for anything.

thier discord is a much better place to judge things in this regard. or reddit even. both have way higher active post counts and users than this forum.

Where did I speak of massive changes?

[Shoeboogie]

Sneak + xbow makes traversing ashlands 10x easier. Stop bashing your head against a wall and crying foul.

[Draconis]

Originally posted by Shoeboogie:

Sneak + xbow makes traversing ashlands 10x easier. Stop bashing your head against a wall and crying foul.

It even works surprisingly good in ashlands, even on low skill.

[bacon]

its really not that hard. one more biome to go!

[a_person]

I've been having issues with enemies spawning far too often/noticing me from ~50m away in certain areas in the ashlands. It sometimes gets to the point that I cant do any mining/building due to 10+ naturally spawned enemies constantly swarming me.

[mike240184]

Originally posted by Gunnar Hurtya:

Originally posted by Gunnar Hurtya:

So have you trained Asksvin and have a saddle so you can safely explore?

I mine the spires, then jump on an asksvin to pick it up, seems quite easy to me. Put down torches to stop mobs spawning, I really don't see why you're having trouble, use the dead raiser and bubble if it's that hard for you, sheesh.

Eh? The dead raiser? To get a few skeletons that will chase something off into the lava and then immediately die?

Yeah, great idea …..